October 8, 2013

Daniel Radcliffe Is Always Smoking And Apologizing

This Sunday's TIMES magazine had a lengthy profile of former HARRY POTTER star and now (literally) indie darling Daniel Radcliffe. This week the film KILL YOUR DARLINGS (directed by my colleague and fellow NYU grad John Krokidas) features Radcliffe as he makes quite a break with his wizardly past by playing gay beat poet Allen Ginsberg. This piece, however, is not the usual celebrity fluff. The writer Susan Dominus had some serious access to Radcliffe who seemed unguarded in speaking with her about the challenges of international, inescapable Beatles-style fame at the ripe old age of 23. Apparently, he feels an intense need to apologize to many fans he meets, in fear of not coming across as a nice guy. It's sweet and almost a little sad, realizing how intensely he cares about how each one of his fans personally perceive him.

Radcliffe also comes off as extremely ambitious as well (given the spate of unusual projects he's taken on since retiring his wand), as well as being quite smart, somewhat geeky, and a big NFL fan(!). He is also very open about how he drank too much for a few years and even showed up on set drunk for one of the Potter films. The tales of his drinking at pubs are all the more remarkable in that he wasn't hounded by tabloids and didn't become a Lindsay-style child star train-wreck. He has since quit drinking but does smoke quite a bit--so much so that that was the number one reason he moved out of his parents home at age 17.

Radcliffe has been an outspoken and impressive ally of the LGBT community, supporting one of my favorite charities the Trevor Project. And in this article he again makes a wonderful yet simple statement about how he doesn't understand all the fuss regarding his current role in DARLINGS. "I honestly don't know what the big deal is," he says, adding that "people have been having gay sex for as long as they’ve been having straight sex, period." Nicely put. All in all, this profile is a great read in that not only do you get a nice long peek into his fishbowl-like life, you actually get to know him a little bit more, rather than just getting the usual PR lines standard in a piece like this.